MUSIC GROUP THE GATEWAY CENTRE TURRIFF (THURSDAY NIGHTS 6PM – 8.30PM)
This group is run for any young person under the age of 25 to enable them to play instruments and socialise with other young people within the Turriff area.
This group seems as far from a literacies group as you can get however since begin this course I have recognised literacies in all that I do in day to day life.
When I started to see the connections with Literacies it made it easier to introduce a new way to encourage the young people to see what they do all the time in the group, and accredit them with new skills.
The group held a gig night, during the planning for the night the group first of all had to find a date that was available for the venue this involved communication with the office staff to check the diary, then they had to work out how long they had to practice the songs they would play and how many songs would be needed to fill the time from start to finish , this was a big task they had to work out how long each song was and how many groups were going to play, how long did they need to change from one group to another. The next task for the group to do was to write letters to all the house owners in the area to let them know that the event was going ahead and that there would be a lot of activity around the Centre. The group then invited other groups to become involved in the night, they found out how much time they would fill and then worked out a running order for the night and for the practice sessions. The numbers allowed in the centre was the next task once the group found this out by checking the regulations they counted the amount of people in the groups, the amount of staff needed to work on the night the remainder was the amount of people they could sell tickets to, once this was worked out they had to design the tickets and posters, working out what information had to go on to each. They printed off the tickets and posters and each decided which part of the distribution they would be responsible for.
Before doing this course I would have done all of this with the group automatically and not been aware myself, so would not have been able to praise the young people with all the literacies which went into this project this is very important especially with this group as the majority of them would have said they could not have done all the maths, reading, communicating, advertising, IT work, and the rest like me, would have not noticed it as literacies, just things they need to do to get to the end result.
In the future I will be more aware of the literacies in all the work I do and I am looking forward to being able to help others recognise literacies in the things they enjoy and by doing this I think that the self belief and self confidence will naturally be raised. With young people they see learning as only things they do in school and are mostly totally unaware of learning in any other situations, so if not learning in a formal way they do not see the value but I believe it is as valuable as formal learning as some people bloom under our way of learning through fun and things that you enjoy.
When we point out all the things that the young people have achieve by working in groups like the one I have described it is usually a shock for them to see all the skills involved in the things they do quite happily, this has to be one of the best way to bring attention to all the positive things they already know and have learned without realising they are actually in a learning environment, some people are so put off by formal learning this is the perfect way to continue the life long learning ideal and may even encourage them to think about giving formal learning another attempt.
This is the ALNIS report's definition of adult literacies: *1) The ability to read and write and use numeracy, to handle information, to express ideas and opinions, to make decisions and solve problems, as family members, workers, citizens and lifelong learners.
NALA’s definition of literacy:
*2) Literacy involves listening and speaking, reading, writing, numeracy and
using everyday technology to communicate and handle information. But it includes more than the technical skills of communication: it also has personal, social and economic dimensions. Literacy increases the opportunity for individuals and communities to reflect on their situation explore new possibilities and initiate change.
Before starting this course literacies was basic reading and writing, I would not have even included numeracy in this as I had seen it as a separate topic all together and it has shocked me how wide and varied the literacies subject is and I still feel that I am just scratching the surface of this subject and as with all learning this will be a life long learning curve.
SCOTLAND V ENGLAND adult literacies strategy. Scotland.
The strategy is strongly tied to community learning with a positive learner lead ethos.
The literacy and numeracy curriculum is research based and it is to be used as a starting point for the tutor and learner.
It is to support development in all aspects of the life long learning approach.
In Scotland the learner and tutor discuss what is the target they want to reach and set goals that they meet, which shows exactly where the learner is, how far they have come and how far is still to go to reach the original target.
England.
The English strategy was investing high quality training and support for teachers.
National test will be the benchmark to see if the literacy and numeracy targets are being achieved.
Engage with learners to create a learning opportunity to change lives.
I think that the Scottish thinking of making learning learner based and enabling the learner to be in control and set the level of learning to suit the learner and the needs of the learner is the way that will be the most successful as it is which enables people to start adult learning at a point they are comfortable with and as the learners confidence grows, the goals can get bigger and I hope this will increase the amount of adult learning in one form or another to raise the overall literacy ability in Scotland.
This group is one of the many youth groups that run in the Aberdeenshire area, in the past the youth groups would have had no formal targets or evaluation, this is now what we have to work towards which has lead to the young people being much more aware of all aspects of the work that is done for them, the groups were always run by youth workers and the young people would just come along and join in. Now we must first of all have a need to justify cost, then we involve the young people first by listening to what is wanted in the area. Once all the information has been collated we then start the group, all of the young people are guided to take control of the group we make one of the first jobs deciding what the rules of the group are going to be and if they make the rules they tend to follow and self govern better. The group all vote for the named positions and then we spend a lot of time teaching the group through them being in control of the meetings and sessions, what is expected of the group and how to get the best use of the time they have together. At all times we try to explain what they are doing and show how it fits in with the world they will be in charge of in a matter of years, they always are surprised when they have looked back over the group plan and evaluation form how much they have learned without feeling like they are being in a learning environment.
This shows learner lead, this is classed as youth work but the young people can range up to 25 so it also comes under adult education which means that the funding for this group comes from a different budget which allows more of the small adult education budget to be used for more obviously adult learning courses.
FACTS AND FIGURES IRELAND
International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS)
*3)
On a one to five scale 25% of Irish adults were placed in level 1 of the scale it is thought that some of the reasons for this is that the majority of the group would have been older and may not have even finished primary school, free second level education was only introduced in 1967 which would have excluded a lot of the population before that date and they may have only achieved the level needed for the social skills needed for there life.
A further 30% reached level 2 which would have enabled them to carry out simple tasks.
In the 16 to 25 age group a fifth was level 1 and that was much worse than the same age group in Sweden (3%) and Germany (5%).
In Learning for Life, the 2000 White Paper on Adult Education, adult literacy was made a priority for the government which was a first and this was a plan to raise the literacies by 2006.
A target was made to reduce the percentage of people with literacy problems from 25% to between 20% and 15% however these targets have not been monitored so I do not know whether this has been a success. Tomorrows Skills, Forfas, 2007 showed that 30% of the workforce level 3 qualifications or less with 10% having no qualifications the target for this is to reduce this to 7% by 2020.
The budget for the national adult literacy programme was 93.7 million euro.
FACTS AND FIGURES SCOTLAND
*4) Scottish IALS
800,000 adults in Scotland have very low literacy skills, some of the reasons being; leaving school at 16 or under, low income families, social grouping, living in poor areas, age (over 55), health or disability and gender.
Of the Scottish population that are in level 1, 25% are unhappy with the ability that they have with literacy and numeracy.
The people with low skills were found to less likely to use a computer or to go to a library.
The focus of the adult education now is to be;
Young people that have limited education.
MCMC which will cover young people not in education or work.
Workers facing redundancy.
ESOL which is for the learners that English is not
their first language.
People in low skill jobs or low incomes.
People who have health problems or disabilities.
REFLECTIONS
I feel that this course has been good for me in that I understand much better how to introduce the subject of literacies to groups of young people that I work with, but I now think that when people of any age come into my work to ether ask for help with literacies or just come into socialise with others and I recognise a problem with form filling or if they avoid any form of literacies I feel confident that I would be able to talk to them and with that I would be able to ether help them or partner them with a tutor that would be able to help the learner reach the standard they want to reach.
In that last sentence is one of the biggest problems that I think we face, we are supposed to all be working as partners with all the other education providers who ever they are. I have found that in practice it does not work - if we take the school for example when a HMe inspection is due they are very keen to work with the community education workers. It sometimes seems that community education is a convienent babysitting service for the pupil that they find hard to control. However when I have asked for help with any young people that I think would benefit from our type of work rather than totally formal education the school finds it hard to see the whole picture as we see it. We are asked to join the school in certain meetings to deal with young people who are struggling within the school timetable but while the meeting always goes well at the time the school overlook the opportunity to include us in projects unless they need extra staff. In my experimnce the formal education sector in our area are keen to tick boxes in terms of partnership working, as the government has said that the multi agency approach is the way forward but sadly this only genuinely happens in some areas.
I work more with the police in our area and they have completely got the whole work together ethos, if they have a problem with ether a young person or a group and it is something that can be worked with rather than just police business they call us and ask for our opinion and if appropriate we will get involved and work with the police over a period of time to solve the problem which gains trust with the young people and the community which can only be a good thing.
The colleges have started working much better in our area n the last two years and we are working with the local college to build relationships so that we will improve the partnership and give the community more choices in local centre so that the learner can access the courses easier.
We run three courses a week for non English speakers and we tried to work with the local factory but this was not as big a success as we thought it would be as the factory would only let us speak to the workers during the breaks and we got the feeling that it was just another chance for the factory to say that they are helping the foreign worker become part of the community, this at least let us meet people and we have made sure that the classes that are running in the community centre are on at times so that no matter what shift the worker is on that week they can manage to get to a class. Now we are trying to get the females to come to the class and we hope this will enable them to feel that they are valued members of the community and when the children come home from school or nursery they will be able to communicate in either language and may even be able to help with school homework.
In evaluation the importance of organisation in any future projects is vital, the biggest lesson for me will be to make sure I note all references where and when I read them and keep them all together, to prevent the fear that not having done that caused, I will also use the on-line library more and ensure that I allocate the correct time each week to study, I will also make sure that I use all the help available to me whether that is someone giving me moral support, practical support or advice.
Sadly I do not think that literacies will ever get the amount of money to deal with all the problems which this country has with literacies, but we must just keep working and make sure that we help as many people as we can in any way we can.
MUSIC GROUP THE GATEWAY CENTRE TURRIFF (THURSDAY NIGHTS 6PM – 8.30PM)
This group is run for any young person under the age of 25 to enable them to play instruments and socialise with other young people within the Turriff area.
This group seems as far from a literacies group as you can get however since begin this course I have recognised literacies in all that I do in day to day life.
When I started to see the connections with Literacies it made it easier to introduce a new way to encourage the young people to see what they do all the time in the group, and accredit them with new skills.
The group held a gig night, during the planning for the night the group first of all had to find a date that was available for the venue this involved communication with the office staff to check the diary, then they had to work out how long they had to practice the songs they would play and how many songs would be needed to fill the time from start to finish , this was a big task they had to work out how long each song was and how many groups were going to play, how long did they need to change from one group to another. The next task for the group to do was to write letters to all the house owners in the area to let them know that the event was going ahead and that there would be a lot of activity around the Centre. The group then invited other groups to become involved in the night, they found out how much time they would fill and then worked out a running order for the night and for the practice sessions. The numbers allowed in the centre was the next task once the group found this out by checking the regulations they counted the amount of people in the groups, the amount of staff needed to work on the night the remainder was the amount of people they could sell tickets to, once this was worked out they had to design the tickets and posters, working out what information had to go on to each. They printed off the tickets and posters and each decided which part of the distribution they would be responsible for.
Before doing this course I would have done all of this with the group automatically and not been aware myself, so would not have been able to praise the young people with all the literacies which went into this project this is very important especially with this group as the majority of them would have said they could not have done all the maths, reading, communicating, advertising, IT work, and the rest like me, would have not noticed it as literacies, just things they need to do to get to the end result.
In the future I will be more aware of the literacies in all the work I do and I am looking forward to being able to help others recognise literacies in the things they enjoy and by doing this I think that the self belief and self confidence will naturally be raised. With young people they see learning as only things they do in school and are mostly totally unaware of learning in any other situations, so if not learning in a formal way they do not see the value but I believe it is as valuable as formal learning as some people bloom under our way of learning through fun and things that you enjoy.
When we point out all the things that the young people have achieve by working in groups like the one I have described it is usually a shock for them to see all the skills involved in the things they do quite happily, this has to be one of the best way to bring attention to all the positive things they already know and have learned without realising they are actually in a learning environment, some people are so put off by formal learning this is the perfect way to continue the life long learning ideal and may even encourage them to think about giving formal learning another attempt.
This is the ALNIS report's definition of adult literacies:
*1) The ability to read and write and use numeracy, to handle information, to express ideas and opinions, to make decisions and solve problems, as family members, workers, citizens and lifelong learners.
NALA’s definition of literacy:
*2) Literacy involves listening and speaking, reading, writing, numeracy and
using everyday technology to communicate and handle information. But it includes more than the technical skills of communication: it also has personal, social and economic dimensions.
Literacy increases the opportunity for individuals and communities to reflect on their situation explore new possibilities and initiate change.
Before starting this course literacies was basic reading and writing, I would not have even included numeracy in this as I had seen it as a separate topic all together and it has shocked me how wide and varied the literacies subject is and I still feel that I am just scratching the surface of this subject and as with all learning this will be a life long learning curve.
SCOTLAND V ENGLAND adult literacies strategy.
Scotland.
The strategy is strongly tied to community learning with a positive learner lead ethos.
The literacy and numeracy curriculum is research based and it is to be used as a starting point for the tutor and learner.
It is to support development in all aspects of the life long learning approach.
In Scotland the learner and tutor discuss what is the target they want to reach and set goals that they meet, which shows exactly where the learner is, how far they have come and how far is still to go to reach the original target.
England.
The English strategy was investing high quality training and support for teachers.
National test will be the benchmark to see if the literacy and numeracy targets are being achieved.
Engage with learners to create a learning opportunity to change lives.
I think that the Scottish thinking of making learning learner based and enabling the learner to be in control and set the level of learning to suit the learner and the needs of the learner is the way that will be the most successful as it is which enables people to start adult learning at a point they are comfortable with and as the learners confidence grows, the goals can get bigger and I hope this will increase the amount of adult learning in one form or another to raise the overall literacy ability in Scotland.
This group is one of the many youth groups that run in the Aberdeenshire area, in the past the youth groups would have had no formal targets or evaluation, this is now what we have to work towards which has lead to the young people being much more aware of all aspects of the work that is done for them, the groups were always run by youth workers and the young people would just come along and join in. Now we must first of all have a need to justify cost, then we involve the young people first by listening to what is wanted in the area. Once all the information has been collated we then start the group, all of the young people are guided to take control of the group we make one of the first jobs deciding what the rules of the group are going to be and if they make the rules they tend to follow and self govern better. The group all vote for the named positions and then we spend a lot of time teaching the group through them being in control of the meetings and sessions, what is expected of the group and how to get the best use of the time they have together. At all times we try to explain what they are doing and show how it fits in with the world they will be in charge of in a matter of years, they always are surprised when they have looked back over the group plan and evaluation form how much they have learned without feeling like they are being in a learning environment.
This shows learner lead, this is classed as youth work but the young people can range up to 25 so it also comes under adult education which means that the funding for this group comes from a different budget which allows more of the small adult education budget to be used for more obviously adult learning courses.
FACTS AND FIGURES IRELAND
International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS)
*3)
On a one to five scale 25% of Irish adults were placed in level 1 of the scale it is thought that some of the reasons for this is that the majority of the group would have been older and may not have even finished primary school, free second level education was only introduced in 1967 which would have excluded a lot of the population before that date and they may have only achieved the level needed for the social skills needed for there life.
A further 30% reached level 2 which would have enabled them to carry out simple tasks.
In the 16 to 25 age group a fifth was level 1 and that was much worse than the same age group in Sweden (3%) and Germany (5%).
In Learning for Life, the 2000 White Paper on Adult Education, adult literacy was made a priority for the government which was a first and this was a plan to raise the literacies by 2006.
A target was made to reduce the percentage of people with literacy problems from 25% to between 20% and 15% however these targets have not been monitored so I do not know whether this has been a success.
Tomorrows Skills, Forfas, 2007 showed that 30% of the workforce level 3 qualifications or less with 10% having no qualifications the target for this is to reduce this to 7% by 2020.
The budget for the national adult literacy programme was 93.7 million euro.
FACTS AND FIGURES SCOTLAND
*4) Scottish IALS
800,000 adults in Scotland have very low literacy skills, some of the reasons being; leaving school at 16 or under, low income families, social grouping, living in poor areas, age (over 55), health or disability and gender.
Of the Scottish population that are in level 1, 25% are unhappy with the ability that they have with literacy and numeracy.
The people with low skills were found to less likely to use a computer or to go to a library.
The focus of the adult education now is to be;
Young people that have limited education.
MCMC which will cover young people not in education or work.
Workers facing redundancy.
ESOL which is for the learners that English is not
their first language.
People in low skill jobs or low incomes.
People who have health problems or disabilities.
REFLECTIONS
I feel that this course has been good for me in that I understand much better how to introduce the subject of literacies to groups of young people that I work with, but I now think that when people of any age come into my work to ether ask for help with literacies or just come into socialise with others and I recognise a problem with form filling or if they avoid any form of literacies I feel confident that I would be able to talk to them and with that I would be able to ether help them or partner them with a tutor that would be able to help the learner reach the standard they want to reach.
In that last sentence is one of the biggest problems that I think we face, we are supposed to all be working as partners with all the other education providers who ever they are. I have found that in practice it does not work - if we take the school for example when a HMe inspection is due they are very keen to work with the community education workers. It sometimes seems that community education is a convienent babysitting service for the pupil that they find hard to control. However when I have asked for help with any young people that I think would benefit from our type of work rather than totally formal education the school finds it hard to see the whole picture as we see it. We are asked to join the school in certain meetings to deal with young people who are struggling within the school timetable but while the meeting always goes well at the time the school overlook the opportunity to include us in projects unless they need extra staff. In my experimnce the formal education sector in our area are keen to tick boxes in terms of partnership working, as the government has said that the multi agency approach is the way forward but sadly this only genuinely happens in some areas.
I work more with the police in our area and they have completely got the whole work together ethos, if they have a problem with ether a young person or a group and it is something that can be worked with rather than just police business they call us and ask for our opinion and if appropriate we will get involved and work with the police over a period of time to solve the problem which gains trust with the young people and the community which can only be a good thing.
The colleges have started working much better in our area n the last two years and we are working with the local college to build relationships so that we will improve the partnership and give the community more choices in local centre so that the learner can access the courses easier.
We run three courses a week for non English speakers and we tried to work with the local factory but this was not as big a success as we thought it would be as the factory would only let us speak to the workers during the breaks and we got the feeling that it was just another chance for the factory to say that they are helping the foreign worker become part of the community, this at least let us meet people and we have made sure that the classes that are running in the community centre are on at times so that no matter what shift the worker is on that week they can manage to get to a class. Now we are trying to get the females to come to the class and we hope this will enable them to feel that they are valued members of the community and when the children come home from school or nursery they will be able to communicate in either language and may even be able to help with school homework.
In evaluation the importance of organisation in any future projects is vital, the biggest lesson for me will be to make sure I note all references where and when I read them and keep them all together, to prevent the fear that not having done that caused, I will also use the on-line library more and ensure that I allocate the correct time each week to study, I will also make sure that I use all the help available to me whether that is someone giving me moral support, practical support or advice.
Sadly I do not think that literacies will ever get the amount of money to deal with all the problems which this country has with literacies, but we must just keep working and make sure that we help as many people as we can in any way we can.